MOG

Hey what a coinkydink. Oatmeal just mentioned Ron Carter on his Frisell post. Sweet tracks. I will have a nice 3 day thanks. First job I ever had that gave me this Friday off.

Rawk,Sam..Any guess on the second hip hop tune vocalist?

No clue and for some reason the button isn't working for me now. :(

Yeah, love those Carter samples. The rapper sounds like Ms. Badu kind of? Can it be?

Hello Amiel..No sir. it is not Ms.Badu. I believe the woman in question had only one record back in 1994.

oh, i was thinking it was some pre-R&B alias. I have no idea.

ok the second one is killing me. im just gonna take a wild shot in the dark and say TLC.

I have no idea, as this was long before I started to listen to HipHop. But I like her flow a lot. Has some but not enough similarity to What What, that was engaged by The Herbaliser from time to time. Apart from that What What supposedly was far too young for rapping, when this song was recorded.

Rap (when and why did people start calling it "hip hop"?) and country music have few similarities, but a lot of parallels.

They are both locked in a formula that never seems to vary or evolve; the passage of decades leaves them as unaltered as the pyramids. Both genres require that the vocals be delivered in a (sorry, but it's true) distinct stereotype that allows almost no room for individuality at all - the country singer's voice must immediately call out "thick-skulled bumpkin who will live and die without ever reading a single book"; the rapper's voice must immediately signal "wildly egotistical sociopath; certainly dangerous, probably armed" (needless to say, the actual person doing the singing may be nothing remotely like this, but their vocal persona is a fixed part of the music). Both genres are fossilized in 4/4 (well, country might occasionally venture into waltz time); a country song in 5/4 would be the stuff of a comedy skit, and despite these occasional homages to jazz, rap very simply wouldn't dare, and might not even be able to in most cases - if you can just insert a snippet from some revered album and get credit for musical sophistication, why bother? And yet another parallel - and it kills me to admit this, because I'm a complete snob in this regard - is that their lyrics, although embalmed in their subject matter and style, are quite often (and the track accompanying this post is an example) unsettlingly clever. The dimwit hayseed, the unapologetic thug - how DARE they outshine God's chosen music in any aspect, let alone this most cherished? There, Devil, is your due.

Now if rap and country really wanted to impress me, they would have the judgment and tact to realize they'd calcified creatively, produce some big last hurrah, and die. Jazz and heavy metal (well, yes; they still exist, marginally, but you know what I mean) did this, and however far they wandered from the path of righteousness before they collapsed, they knew when and how to do it.

Show a little class, country and rap music. You had a good run. Now DIE.

Haha, that was a nice and elaborate comment, though bogus in some of its core propositions. I have no idea of country music, why I can't say anything to the comparison. But some of my favorite HipHop producers like The Herbliser, DJ Shadow, DJ Vadim and the like produce or at least produced for a certain time period, that was at least long enough to be formative for their style, music without rapper, without human voice. So what then? But nice try, usually the comments aren't so well elaborated. Btw: I would have doomed practically rock music one year before, but I heard in here some good stuff, which changed my mind a bit, though bad tongues might say, that I just became too softish and lost my healthy criticism. The same is still true for German "Volksmusik", what is the "germanic" equivalent of your beloved country music. But I'm working on this ;).

Heh, Zarpex..nice one. Can't tell if you are joking, but I like it nonetheless, In the olden days you probably would have started a huge argument..but it's hard to get a good argument going these days, especially with me. I've turned into a wallflower in my old MOG-age. In a lot of ways you are right about the popular incarnations of rap and country, but there's a lot of great stuff going on in the "underground" for both genres.

► This was a fun one from way back ◄

I'll give a few more folks a chance to answer the questions and post the answer tomorrow. If an argument does take off, I'll be sure to caome back and moderate.

Hermes, please forgive me if I got a bit boisterous in my opinions, and let me add that I applaud and deeply appreciate the spirit in which you took them.

I don't for a moment believe that there are no people with imagination and musical talent to be found in all of rap music; I know one personally. Why someone with his gifts (a masterful cellist and a superb, classically trained pianist) would squander them on the desert soil of rap I'll never understand, but I certainly can't question either his genuine love for the stuff or his musical sophistication.

These producers you speak of may very likely possess talents that would embarrass me, and I'd be curious to hear the music you describe. I welcome embarrassment; it means I'm learning something substantial. But as I understand it, (perhaps naively), a piece of music without vocal accompaniment cannot, by definition, be rap. Or perhaps you're touching on the question I raised about the distinction between rap and hip hop?

I'm a bit alarmed at the idea that you really found nothing to like in rock (which is what I meant, playfully, by "God's chosen music") until you found mog. I'd love to know what songs, bands or subgenres you've come to enjoy.

But you really must read my comment a second time if you got the impression that I love country music; that was exactly the opposite of what I was saying. If anything, country bothers me even more than rap, simply by virtue of having sat frozen in our culture for even longer without doing anything new or interesting.

Most importantly, though, you seem to understand that good opinions are strong opinions, and strong opinions are forcefully expressed. Lor' bless ye, squire.

Some say Rawk died towards the end of the 50's.. the fact that necrophiliac white folks like it has kept it alive, such as it is.

Good heavens, Cody; the blossom of rock didn't even really open until The Beatles' Help! came out in 1965. I don't know who these "some" are that you speak of, but surely there's some kind of organized charity out there that offers care and services to the terminally oblivious.

"The fact that necrophiliac white folks like it has kept it alive, such as it is" drew blood, though. Let it gush from the scuppers.

I texted my rap producer friend and asked him for a crash course in it after my first comment seemed to raise eyebrows; he was greatly amused and told me he wouldn't do it, because my bewilderment would bring me more pleasure than trying to force myself to "get" it ever would. Smart guy. You can't decide to fall in love; you have to fall.

My Dad is a classical composer, and his aesthetic cutoff point is 1900. Nothing after that registers with him; all jazz, all rock, all everything since that time he refers to as "gut-bucket music," and screens out completely. Me, I like a smattering of Bach, then a vacuum, then Beethoven (whom I like a lot - I'd say he's the inventor of the "riff," personally); after that, another vacuum till Scott Joplin showed up, then New Orleans jazz, then another vacuum till The Beatles. And we've basically been drifting back into the vacuum since around 1989 or so.

He and I often sit together in his music room, playing records, each trying to persuade the other that he's drinking curdled milk and walking blindly past the nectar of life. It's tremendous fun to see the same lights turned on in each others by such completely different music.

So like I said - good opinions are strong opinions, but I'm quite sincere when I say I really don't like offending anyone. I'm a writer, and I get into the flow of words and ideas, and next thing I know someone is storming furiously out of the cyber-room, or throwing roundhouse cyber-punches at me. I assure you there was nothing facetious about my apology. I really thought I was arriving at something we could discuss.

And I still want to know when and why people started referring to rap as hip hop.

Hip hop includes many things that are loosely related to the urban culture that spawned the music. Rapping is the vocal skill, typically dancing, the breakbeat music, the skill of juggling two records on two turntables, the graffiti art are rolled up under the name of hip-hop. But basically it is an more encompassing form. And for the record, hip hop might be dead, but that does not mean there is not money to be made.

Rap was a slang term well before the music known to some as Rap. Rappers are just a part of the cultural phenomenon/art form of Hip Hop, whose elements are grafitti writing, break dancing, (MC'ing)rapping , and Dj'ing..Early on, toward the middle 70's they were all part an organic growth and flowering of various elements of Bronx,New York culture. Each facet of Hip Hop has its own history, but there was a real convergance at this time. So, like Jazz, it is hard to put a finger on just what came first..I know this, in the late 70's hip hop was in use by the people making the music...Calling the music itself Rap, in my opinion, was a media/commerce construct, that has gone in and out of style as a descriptor of the music by the people who make it and listen to it. At this point, "underground artists" tend to use hip hop and folks looking to reach the masses use rap. But it is muddled and both terms can be perjoratives or badges of honor.

I got more on this topic if you wanna hear it.

Thanks very much, Oat and Cody. My interpretation is that it would be correct for me to call it hip hop, but only inappropriately so, since I'm not even a convert, let alone a member of the underground. So although I should call it hip hop, I SHOULD call it rap.

Next question (and please tell me if this is bugging you, but everyone seems to know this stuff but me): Who was the first rapper?

Cab Calloway if you look at it one way, A griot from Mali if you look at it another. Or you could look at someone like George Clinton, who was just riffing off what Dj's of the 50's (like Jocko Henderson) did ,ie.talking over records.

Some might say the Last Poets or Watts Prophets or Gil Scott-Heron or Iceberg Slim in the late 60's/early 70's, doing poetry over music.

Some say the first record to street based on the early NYC happenings was King Tim III (Personality Jock) by The Fatback Band.

It is generally accepted that the first hip hop DJ was Kool Herc, a Jamaican Born DJ who had a sound system in the Bronx. Around '73 he started the ball rolling on Hip Hop DJ techniques (back spinning and breaks) and some MC'ing (based on Jamaican toasting).

Basically what Kool Herc did spread like wildfire and MC's and DJ's proliferated quickly throughout the NYC Metro area.

Ah; a hint of some desperately needed background!

Thank you for putting up with me.

Personally, the first guy who was doing what I would only years later realize was rapping was Muhammad Ali...

Good point on Ali. I think he exposed parts of America to this tradition: (wiki) The Dozens" is an element of the African-American oral tradition in which two competitors, usually males, go head to head in a competition of often good-natured, ribald "trash talk." They take turns insulting--"cracking", "west coast dissin'," or "ranking" on--one another, their adversary's mother or other family member until one of them has no comeback. This is called playing the Dozens or doin' the Dozens, and sometimes dirty Dozens, The Dozens is a contest of personal power--of wit, self-control, verbal ability, mental agility and mental toughness. Each putdown, each "snap," ups the ante. Defeat can be humiliating; but a skilled contender, win or lose, may gain respect. The Dozens is one of the contributing elements in the development of hip hop, especially the practice of battling.

"Yo' momma," a common, widely recognized argumentative rejoinder in African-American vernacular speech, is a cryptic, and sometimes comical, allusion to the Dozens.

Also it is hard not to look back to some of the talkin' blues records that began to come out in the 20's as precursors to hip hop/rap, as well as, the numerous preaching records.

I just finished reading a book called Boogaloo, which traces the development of (author Arthur Kempton's word) Afra-American popular music in an unbroken line from "The King" of gospel composers (Thomas Dorsey, a cat who learned and released Blues records as a young man under the name, Georgia Tom) and went on to boost the career of Mahalia Jackson, to Sam Cooke, to Motown/Stax, to George Clinton, to Hip Hop.

I don't have it in me to do the death of rock argument now, but like Oat said, some claim Hip Hop is dead,too..Both camps that espouse these views point to the incredible commercialization of once beloved and "pure" art forms. I think The Beatles were at the forefront of this on the Rock side. I don't totally buy it, but there is some truth to both assertions.

I agree with zarpex that rap and country can get pretty stale. But as I've said before about rap, the top-40 rap & r&b radio stations play a lot of new hits that have amazingly innovative, fresh, spare, unusual arrangements accompanying rappers and singers. So I tune out the rap and listen to background.

Spike, Back in the late 80's, early 90's the NYC record shops for DJ's were the only ones with Hip hop records, but they were run by the House Music guys..These were the type of shops where they would still play the records for you. Any way, the House guys would never play the vocal parts of rap records, only the instrumentals. I didn't like it then, but the instrumentals are what I like better now. Still though, there are some great rappers out there. For the most part though, the producers are in charge these days and rappers are a dime a dozen, just as there are many,many hat-wearing,same-sounding country singers.

The Ron Carter bassline as used in:

Play My Funk- Simple E

This is what I call a worthy, informed and informative discussion (even if the topic and assertions are all pretty well known to me). Such discourse is one of the reasons why MOG is a boon to music lovers. Points to all.

Great line of thought. I totally agree with Cody that the instrumentality of innovative production has remained a strength of hip hop, and the only reason I pay it any attention anymore (think Clipse).

The quality and timbre of the vocal instrument helps, but I don't usually listen to the words these days as the MC's seem to be continually inventing new slang to talk about the same stuff, kind of fooling you into thinking they are talking about something new. Caveat: I will always be a sucker for the more righteous and spiritually based verses. Just a personal thing.

I gotta agree with Mike - the wealth of knowledge and the ability to engage in these highly informative diatribes makes life here at mog absolutely priceless. Thanks gang!!

Diatribes R'Us!

Missed out on this one..... great thread!